For, notwithstanding all that Isoult could urge (which was very little
indeed), Prosper started next morning with a dozen men to scour the
district for Maulfry. He refused point blank to take the girl with
him, and after her rebuke and abasement of the night before, still
more after the reconciliation on knees, she dared not plead overmuch.
He was a man and a great lord; she could not suppose that she knew all
his designs--any of them, if it came to that. He must go his way--
which was man's way--and she must stop at High March nursing her
heart--which was woman's way--even if High March proved a second
Gracedieu and Isabel a more inexorable Maulfry. No act of her own, she
resolved, should henceforward lead her to disobey him. Ah! she
remembered with a hot flush of pain--ah! her disobedience at Gracedieu
had brought all the mischief, Vincent's death all the anguish. Of
course it had not; of course Maulfry had tricked her; but she was not
the girl to spare herself reproaches. Her loyalty to Prosper took her
easily the length of stultification.
So Prosper went; and it may be some consolation to reflect that his
going pleased fourteen people at least. First it pleased the men he
took with him; for Prosper, that born fighter, was never so humorous
as when at long odds with death. Fighting seemed a frolic with him for
captain; a frolic, at that, where the only danger was that in being
killed outright you would lose a taste of the certain win for your
side. For among the High March men there was already a tradition--God
knows how these things grow--that Prosper le Gai and the hooded hawk
could not be beaten. He was so cheerful, victory so light a thing.
Then his cry--Bide the time--could anything be more heartening?
Rung out in his shrill tones over the open field, during a night
attack, say, or called down the darkening alleys of the forest, when
the skirmishers were out of each other's sight and every man faced a
dim circle of possible hidden foes? Pest! it tied man to man, front to
rear. It tied the whole troop to the brain of a young demon, who was
never so cool as when the swords were flying, and most wary when
seeming mad. Blood was a drink, death your toast, at such a banquet.
And that accounts for twelve out of fourteen.
The thirteenth was Countess of Hauterive, Châtelaine of High March,
Lady of Morgraunt, etc. A very few days inhabitancy where Master Roy
was of the party, had assured this lady that the page must be ridded.
She wished him no ill: you do not wish ill to the earwig which you
brush out of the window. Certainly if a boy had needs be stabbed by an
Egyptian (who incontinent disappears and must be hunted) it were
simpler Roy had fallen than the other. But she had no thought of
amending the mistakes of Providence. Great ladies who are really great
do not go to work to have inconvenient lacqueys stabbed. This at least
was not the Countess of Hauterive's way. If Fulk de Bréauté had not
been her lover as well as her husband, if he had been (for instance)
only her husband, she would have despised Earl Roger fully as much for
the affair on Spurnt Heath. No. But she meant Roy to go, and here was
her chance.